Happenstance
by f3tid
Summary: It resides in the unattainable distance between idle fingers or the spectral shadows cast by lengthy eyelashes. Its breath is the light exuded by her smile, its warmth the reverberation of his voice. Fate is the space between two creatures. Affinity is what's left when that space has gone. [Collaboration]


**f3tid:** A friend and I made a habit of writing for Spock and Uhura, recently, and I was tempted to publish it. Spock's perspective, and this chapter, is written by me. Feedback is immeasurably appreciated, and I intend to update this as we go. Please note that, save for the first two chapters, all work is transcribed from tumblr, as written by myself (under the name child-of-two-worlds) and my fellow author (under the name nyota-star). Thanks so very much. Enjoy!

**Disclaimer:** None of the following is trademarked or copyrighted to me, nor is it to my co-author. Paramount claims ownership of Star Trek and all related works. The story, however, is our own.

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A turbid rill seeped along the delicate incline of an insipid cheek, nascent from the unwieldy thickness of a layered headscarf donned indignantly in the midst of Shi'Kahr's sweltering spring heat. A five-tiered stream of arid, errant winds breached the otherwise undisturbed interior of the manor, inundating the strict utilitarianism therein with unrewarding breezes bathed in the clemency of Vulcan's unremitting sun. The heavens bore asymmetrical streaks of orange against its habitual canvas of crimson, concurrent with the hue of the earthly sands it opposed from above. Dawn had surrendered its reign to the noon, curling its fingers into the milky tendrils of the sky and propelling the sun ever higher. Another pearl of perspiration materialized from the pallor of the bridge of his mother's nose and trickled languorously down its length.

She defied her own discomfiture with a portentous smile. Her cheeks compressed just beneath her eyes, crumpling the skin at either edge of her lips and narrowing the saccharine richness roiling in her irises. The fibrous cloth compressed between her palms sojourned with them to her chest as she embraced the garment and reeled her gaze to her companion. Inanely, she felt greedy.

The young man was conscientious in meeting his mother's eyes whether communication was palpable or implied or nothing at all. She was present, as was he. Her passionate alien eyes watched him. That was sufficient incentive.

"Spock, tell me," she said only after admiring the very architecture of her son's face. "What are you feeling right now? What color are those ideas mucking up that remarkable headspace you have, there?"

The birdsong reverberation of her gentle laughter rode the swells of the consuming draft sweeping the room as the man's eyes disappeared beneath a grove of black eyelashes and the precipice of an abundant brow.

"It's alright, I know," she marveled artfully and planted another sweater in the sartorial lexicon inhabiting the walls of the suitcase spread before her. "I appreciate that you considered it, though. I do. Is this going to be warm enough for San Francisco? How many coats did you pack?"

He followed the woman's slight frame across his bedroom's perimeter with a hinged eyebrow. "I find the present quantity of luggage to be ineffectually superfluous."

"I beg to differ."

"I request elaboration."

"I'm not giving it."

She returned to him with an array of scarves draped across her forearm and a broader grin than that which she had left him with. He surveyed the articles with a skeptical eye, but did not attempt contention when she added them gingerly to the evolving mound of clothes. The woman, diminutive in stature and clad in the heavy garb customary to a planet that was not her own, pivoted on the unceremonious platforms of her heels and angled herself to behold the man at her side. She traced the unintelligible lines of neutrality etching the topography of the Vulcan's features with the purest of maternal infatuations. Her heart ached miserably as she navigated the dispassionate creases of his lips, the aquiline slope of his brows, the sagely verge of his nose and the impossibly sturdy cut of his mandible. She beamed with all the celestial iridescence of a thousand systems for each remnant of her husband she found in the face of her son, but grieved the humanity pilfered by his temperate fortitude.

She took solace in the soulful glimmer of his eyes – so opulently and immensely brown that they mimicked the sable bed of the stars – infinite and expanding in perpetuity, gravitational and empty and yet so replete. Briefly, she distinguished the same affinity she projected unto Spock, plaited intricately into the convoluted fabric of intelligence, strength, and ambition coloring his eyes. She found her reflection there, lodged in the darkness and obscured by the splay of light across the surface, and she smiled.

"I'm very proud of you," she relayed softly. "Not because you chose Earth or anything provincial like that. I'm just so happy you _chose_. You're making your own way, and I can't have asked for anything more than you having the privilege just to be yourself."

He nodded stolidly. "Father does not find my decision to enroll in the Starfleet Academy agreeable."

Amanda extended an unfurled hand and grazed the rough flesh of the man's jaw with the inner flesh of her fingers. She watched tentatively as he closed his eyes, ascertaining the significance of the emotions radiating from her skin onto his. "He'll come around. Let yourself be content with what you've accomplished. It's okay."

He pursed his brow and drowned in the consolation of his mother's touch, eyes dormant and expression moot. "'Okay' is a nebulous word with a litany of definitions and uses, contingent upon context and inflection. I invite your specification."

She chuckled and stole a humble step toward him. "You're making the right decision."

"I understand," he replied.

"Would it be acceptable if I embraced you?"

He opened his eyes and glanced down at her beneath a thicket of weighty lashes. "As your child, I am an extension of yourself and, as such, you require no consent on my behalf to engage acts of matriarchal affection."

"True," she relented, "But I choose to receive your permission as a self-governing adult instead. So again, I respectfully ask if it would be acceptable for me to embrace you, Spock."

Spock contemplated the proposal without the affliction of perceivable consternation.

"Affirmative," he stated.

She decimated the space between their bodies with arms outstretched and simper untarnished. The man's figure was expectedly unyielding, remote and preternaturally febrile, as she wound her arms kindly about his midsection and pitched a cheek to his chest. The suffuse of his large palm against her shoulder was pleasant and redolent of his inexperience regarding affectionate touch, but his effort to placate her human indulgences was acknowledged. The woman's chest expelled the sorrowful laughter occupying her arterial heart.

"I'm going to miss you," she sang her adage under the guise of glee.

"Considering the readily accessible proximity between Starfleet Academy and the home you and Father maintain in San Francisco, your sentimentalities are illogical."

"I know," she hummed, "It's a human provision."

The lean muscles manipulating the flesh of his mother's arms constricted and her fragile embrace tautened. He retreated intrinsically to the sanctum of Vulcan taciturnity. It did not hinder her.

"_Tishau nash-veh du_, Spock," she said with the amalgamated warmth of an entire people. He pondered in the quiet umbra of her words.

"Reciprocated," he managed with formal levity.

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Footnotes

_Tishau nash-veh du_: roughly "I care for you" in Vulcan


End file.
